Mysteries of child mummy solved more than 500 years later

An international mummy mystery has been solved in Cincinnati. We now know this child mummy was 3 years old when she died of natural causes somewhere in Peru more than 500 years ago.

The Cincinnati Museum Center asked doctors at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center to take part in the "academic endeavor." Doctors spent weeks studying the remains and looking at images of the young mummy, and they announced their findings on Monday.

"The images that we generated through the course of this process, we had over 12,000 images that we generated," Dr. Andrew Trout of the children's hospital said.

One of the findings is that the young girl's skull was elongated.

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Mysteries of child mummy solved more than 500 years later

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"Many South American cultures believed that a long, narrow head was beautiful, leading them to bind the skulls from birth to form them," Cody Hefner of Cincinnati Museum Center explained.

Many mummies are well-preserved, giving researchers the remarkable opportunity to take a look at their past.